


Of Kittens and Trees

by vibidi



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Banter, Blink-And-You-Miss-It FAWL Reference, Fluff and Crack, Gen, POV Yuri Plisetsky, Post-Canon, Ships are Present But Not Central, There's Probably a Chihoko Joke in Here Somewhere, Unsafe Tree Climbing Practices, Unwarranted and Extravagant Use of the Word 'Fuck', Yuri Plisetsky's Sailor Mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 12:24:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10967169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibidi/pseuds/vibidi
Summary: This was perhaps, in some manner or form, something akin to a mistake.--During a visit to the Hasetsu Botanical Gardens, Yuri Plisetsky gets stuck in a tree.





	Of Kittens and Trees

Viktor cups his hands to his stupid heart-shaped mouth and shouts, “Yurio! How on earth did you get up there?”

Yuri sticks his middle finger up at the finely detailed and rather worried figurines below him. “How do you think, asshole? I climbed.”

The black pine creaks as a gust of wind whips a prickly bough into Yuri’s face and nearly gives him a mouthful of needles. Okay, so climbing a 20-metre tree hadn’t been his brightest idea, but Katsudon had insisted on taking them to Hasetsu’s botanical gardens, and when in Rome…

“Do you need help getting down?” Yuuri wrings his hands.

“No! I like it up here!” Yuri huffs. He tries to cross his arms to set his point in steel but the weak branch below him bobs dangerously and he decides against it. 

Yuuri leans in and speaks to Viktor and Yuri can’t hear a damn thing over the wind, but the way they’re looking up at him gives him the sneaking suspicion that they’re doubting, or worse, _pitying_ him.

He slips his shoe off and throws it at them.

“Yurio!” Viktor squawks, ducking and just narrowly avoiding the leopard-print projectile. 

Yuri amps up the bluster. “That’s not my fucking name, geezer! Get lost and take your piggy with you!” 

They murmur some more. Yuri considers tossing his other shoe at them but it’s chilly for April and a gauzy sock isn’t doing much to protect his other foot, so he takes out his phone and snaps a selfie instead.

At least it’s easy to get a signal up here. Yuri has time to upload the photo to Twitter and Instagram before the lovebirds finally try talking to him again. 

“Hey Yurio, the garden is closing in thirty minutes, so we’re going to go find a warden to help you down,” Katsudon explains. 

“Take your sweet fucking time, ‘cause I’m not going anywhere.” Yuri slings his legs over an adjacent branch and refreshes Instagram. To his chagrin, the Angels have pounced on the photo already.

Yuri+angels10: omg so cute!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
Ice-kitty-kitten-luv: будь осторожен!  
mrs_ic3_tiger: Adorable! Love from Argentina!  
plixxxsky: Мне нравится твоя рубашка!  
otabek-altin: yura how the hell did you get up there  
YuriAng3L92: AAAA IS THAT VIKTOR AND YUURI IN THE BACKGROUND  
котенок144: Я тебя люблю ❤❤❤❤  
phichit+chu: JEALOUS  
Pli-is-best: wow, superbe! bonne chance à wtt :O

Huh. One of these things is not like the other. Well, two, actually, but Hamster Man isn’t in Japan right now and even if he was Yuri wouldn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut about this for more than an hour. Tops.

Yuri peers furtively through the pine needles. Viktor and Katsudon are headed back along the waterside toward the red and white pavilion at the front of the park, and they’re out of earshot. 

He dials Otabek and gets a response on the second ring.

“You climbed a tree and got stuck.”

“Oh my god Beka at least let me explain-” 

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Yuri thanks the stars, the moon, and whatever greater powers might make the world spin that Otabek came along to visit Japan. Not that he’d ever admit he actually climbed a tree and couldn’t figure out how to get the fuck down. Not in a million years and if Altin thinks he can call him out on it then he can shove his _entire_ head up his ass. 

Otabek’s voice comes through again. “Just one thing, Yura.”

“What.” This isn’t going anywhere good, is it.

“You picked the tallest tree in the park, didn’t you.”

Yuri ends the call and very nearly throws his phone to the ground. He’s never going to live this down. Fuck. 

At least Viktor and Yuuri are out of sight. Probably calling the fire brigade and every media outlet in a 50 kilometre radius. Yuri glares up at the gold-and-violet sky, cursing his past self for agreeing to come along for this lame bullshit. He could have spent the evening practicing or out on the town, but nope, fucking Katsuki had pulled a page right out of Makkachin’s puppy eyes book and used it to deadly and entirely unfair ends. 

The sky’s shifting evening colours begin to blend together. Yuri finds himself dizzy and puts his phone away, clutching the spindly trunk instead. It’s a long way down, with only flimsy azalea bushes and woodchip mulch to break the fall if he loses his balance. 

Fine. This was perhaps, in some manner or form, something akin to a mistake.

Not that Yuri regrets it. 

His phone buzzes and he fumbles to pull it back out of his pocket, keeping his legs tight around the branch in front of him.

The first thing he sees is the dark outline of a black pine against an evening sky. The second is him, clinging precariously to the top of the tree. The third is that the message was just sent from Otabek’s phone.

“You’re fucking deleting that right now Altin!” Yuri snarls, contorting so that he has a prime position from which to scowl down at his nonplussed friend. 

“Or what?” Otabek raises a brow. “Doesn’t look like you’re in a position to bargain.”

Yuri seriously considers throwing his other shoe, despite previous reservations, because Otabek would look really good with a red footprint in the middle of his forehead right about now.

He has a point, though.

“Just get me down before Viktor and Katsudon summon half of fucking Hasetsu to come and laugh at me,” Yuri grumbles instead. 

A quiet “hm” is the only response he gets as Otabek sets down his rucksack by a wrought iron bench then walks a 360 around the tree and surrounding bushes. Yuri puffs his cheeks out in what he hopes is a suitably obnoxious pout, but watches closely as his friend takes a slow running start then hops up the first few feet of the tree with ease, his feet finding knots and broken-off branches until he wraps his arms around a solid low-lying branch and hoists himself up.

Fucker just has to be good at everything, doesn’t he. Driving a motorcycle, skating, DJing, and now this too? Come the fuck on. 

By the time Otabek is within reach, Yuri’s had plenty of time to steep in his bitterness. He blows a raspberry and turns his head away. “I’m not coming down until you delete that picture.”

“Oh. Okay.” Instead of protesting, Otabek turns around on his rickety branch and begins climbing back down. 

The words are out of Yuri’s big fat mouth before he can stop them. “Nonono wait! I take it back!”

He’s never gonna hear the end of this.

Otabek turns back around and hops up onto the limb so he’s next to him. “Hold onto a branch above you and put your feet near the base of a branch below you.”

“It’s not that fucking easy or I’d be down already!” Yuri hisses, going for a kind of ‘righteous fury’ and ending up with more of a ‘petulant teenager’ instead. “None of the shit up here is steady.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have climbed this high.”

Yuri scoffs. “What’s the point of climbing something if you’re not going to get to the top?” 

He almost, _almost_ adds a comment about which of them climbed the podium at the GPF and which didn’t. But no. No crossing those sorts of lines, not with Beka.

“Hold the branch you’re on then. Watch.” Otabek demonstrates his technique and swings down to a lower branch like a bizarrely skilled Tarzan wannabe.

Yuri’s not about to back down from a challenge, so he follows suit and nearly misses his mark, his legs flailing in empty space for a heart-shattering second before finally finding purchase on solid bark and wood.

“Now again. Until you can jump to the ground.” 

Yuri drops down to the next branch with a little more ease than the last. Okay. Mission success, but he’s still gotta win the war. Below him Otabek navigates through the tree with ease, taking a seat on a branch like it’s no big deal whenever he has some time to wait. 

“Don’t get too far asshole, you need to catch me if I fall,” Yuri grouses. 

Otabek gives him a signature thumbs-up and maybe, _just maybe_ , the tiniest and most blessed of smiles. But there’s no telling for sure and Yuri doesn’t entirely trust his observational skills when he’s 15 metres above the ground and thinking about writing his last will and testament. 

The slow descent continues. They’re halfway down and the sky has faded to an orange-streaked indigo when he hears what might be the deadliest and most horrific sound known to man.

“Yu-riooooo! You found a friend!”

Yuri clenches Otabek’s forearm. “I’m going to jump. Take care of Potya for me.”

Otabek scoots over and squishes him against the trunk. “Nah.”

“Let me go!” Yuri screeches, and once he seems to have satisfied himself that there will be no jumping, Otabek relinquishes.

Yuri makes it down the tree twice as fast now that the promise of strangling Viktor awaits him at the bottom. He makes it to the lowest branch and jumps the rest of the way, landing hard in the mulch and stalking right up to the happy couple. “You’re one to fucking talk. Like you’ve never gotten stuck in a high place and had to call for help.”

Otabek slips out of the tree and goes to pick up his shoe before coming to stand next to him, watching the exchange with passive disinterest. 

Viktor’s stupid-ass smile turns upside-down and Yuri thinks, for the better part of a second, that he’s won. Then the idiot speaks. “Yuuri, why does he hate us so much? Do we need family counselling?”

“Oh, it’s just a phase. He’ll grow out of it.” There’s a sly edge behind Yuuri’s unassuming smile, and Yuri doesn’t like it one bit. “I know puberty is a tough part of life but you know you can talk to us, right Yurio?”

“I’m going to steal your rings and throw them in the ocean where they belong,” Yuri grumbles.

Viktor straightens. “I think not, _kotenok_!”

“Park closes in five minutes,” Otabek observes, eyes on his phone. 

As they rush back toward the pavilion, Yuri can’t help but grab Otabek’s hand and attention once Viktor and Katsudon are too far ahead to hear.

“Hey, where the hell’d you learn to climb like that?” 

He smirks. He fucking _smirks_. “Come visit Almaty sometime. I’ll show you our orchard.”

Yuri can’t say no to that.

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place around the same time as the Chihoko Incident, which I'd like to think more or less coincides with WTT.
> 
> I promise the next chapter of Steadfast is coming. It's just being a bitch and when [this text post](http://squatchland.tumblr.com/post/160878517249/kitten-i-am-going-to-get-up-high-on-the-tallest) gave me an idea I couldn't resist getting it down right away.


End file.
